United States Template‑class

This template is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States Template This template does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

Should Legal history of marijuana in the United States be included in this template? —User:Christopher Mann McKay^{user talk} 21:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fleshed out the US-specific drug links in the controversies group. Thanks for pointing it out, MrZaius^talk 02:11, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the link to drug policy is enough to cover the subtopics (specific to marijuana). Certainly there are other topics in the template that could be broken down with similar specificity, but I believe this template should serve as a link to summary-style pages that have links to other appropriate titles, not a list of every "n in the United States" articles. As such, I am removing several of the drug-related topics from the template. Madcoverboy 14:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I suppose it is. Didn't occur to me because I created the page from the US section at Prohibition (drugs) specifically to give me an excuse to group those articles here by topic instead of littering them all over the place alphabetically. ;) MrZaius^talk 15:13, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a closing parentheses missing in the "society" section. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.110.241.17 (talk) 20:34, August 23, 2007 (UTC)

Currently, the title of this template is "Major topics in the United States". Shouldn't this be "Major topics of the United States", or even simpler "United States topics"? Regards. --Old Hoss (talk) 18:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While I see your point, it seems a slight majority of article titles in this template are "in the United States." While most of the section devoted to history seems to favor "of," most of the topics covering current events seem to favor "in." I counted 39 "ofs" and 43 "ins" but... that really doesn't mean anything. An article titled "Plumbers of the United States" would seem to imply it contains a list of famous plumbers, while an article titled "Plumbers in the United States" would seem to imply content on plumbers in general. Ergo, I think it makes more sense to use "of," since this template is indeed a list of major topics of the United States. More importantly, would anyone care if we changed it? --ErgoSum88 (talk) 08:49, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are two types of separators: {{·}} and {{•}}. The former should be used in between parenthesized items, with the latter used between main items. I've updated two groups but more remain. 66.167.49.13 (talk) 06:51, 29 March 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Should aport not be included in this template? Surely it is an significant as music, film and television. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.200.12.203 (talk) 17:27, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Thanks for the suggestion. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 18:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I feel that the inclusion of material here is somewhat haphazard- including "Uncle Sam", the "Puerto Rican independence movement", and "Pornography", while leaving out the "Iraq War", "9/11", and "Feminism". What is our rationale? In other areas of Wikipedia, we rely on reliable sources- I think we should do the same thing here. Nothing should be included here if we can't find a reliable source that declares it to be a "major topic". Also, I'm sure we can find some kind of scholarly history material or other such source that gives a list of what it considers to be "the definitive most-important topics in America". johnpseudo 20:33, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You bring up a good point, it seems this template has the potential to become rather large and stuffed full of links. Policy states navboxes should not be too large or too small. However, I think most of the current links are notable major topics, although I'm not sure there should be more than one link for the Puerto Rican debate (when was the last time that was even in the news?). I'm also not sure if finding reliable sources declaring "major topics of the US" is feasible. I think the general guideline is, broad-scope topics listed with a few major narrow-scope topics nested adjacent. If you want to add 9/11 or the Iraq War to the list of politics, go ahead, I don't think anyone would disagree with you that these are major topics. This list wasn't created by one person and therefore it is haphazard as such. In the end, we decide what gets included here by adding them, discussing them and so on, just like any other part of Wikipedia. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 06:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say we should add things that fall under 2 criteria. (1) Only include "X in the United States" articles if there are also articles about X for other countries. (2) Include articles that are emblematic, intrinsic, or unique to the US but are also notable internationally. Madcoverboy (talk) 06:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah but what other countries? The US has far more articles than all the other countries. Many countries lack basic articles such as sports or personal income. Also, I don't see why they have to be "notable internationally." If someone from another country wants to learn about the US, they probably already know about the Iraq War and 9/11, but most likely they know nothing about Uncle Sam or our transportation system. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 08:36, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Putting aside my reliable sources complaint for now... would you (Madcoverboy) include something here if it was the #1 most-important thing in the United States, but was hardly known about outside of the US? How could we say this is a complete list of "Major topics of the United States" if it's really just a "Major U.S. topics that are considered important outside of the U.S."? johnpseudo 19:10, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template has an indention bug. if you put the templat in something like:

foo

[template]

... then the template doesn't allow the succeeding text to revert back to the proper margin. Gonn wrap it in a table till someone else can mess with it. J. D. Redding 12:08, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've tested and tested this, and I can't find anything wrong with this template. I noticed this template in a Navbox grouping in the United States article. It was noticeably different from the other Navboxes, which is what interested me. Evidently the table wrapping has the effect of shortening the Navbar. I went ahead and unwrapped it, but only after trying to repeat the problem you described. Perhaps if you would somehow describe or demonstrate the problem to me, I can try and fix the template. Best of everything to you and yours!

 —  ^{.`</sup>^) Paine Ellsworth<sup>diss`cuss} (^^`.  05:51, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Best. Edit summary. Ever.
Normally, I would say that WP:ICONDECORATION discourages this, but I think that the scope of the navbox would make this a good exception to the rule. I would ask that any well-meaning editors not revert this. bahamut0013^words_deeds 02:00, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Should Theater be added to the template, maybe right next to "television/cinema"? Aristophanes68 (talk) 20:13, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Next time, why don't you be bold and add it yourself? bahamut0013^words_deeds 20:21, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks -- templates make me nervous.... Aristophanes68 (talk) 20:31, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is anyone else concern with the size of this template? I dont thin we need to link everything do we? The history section is so bloated its confusing.Moxy (talk) 19:25, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, dear! I agree that it's too big. Navboxes should not be larger than the typical user's display. This template was unwieldy before the recent expansion of the History section, but the current version is most definitely too big. I endorse taking it back to this version that existed two days ago, then discussing further reductions in the history section.

Instead of adding detail items like "Progressive Era" and "Assassination of John F. Kennedy" to that earlier template version, we should be removing other items that don't represent major historical periods (like "War on Terror (War in Afghanistan, Iraq War)" and "Timeline of modern American conservatism"). Another measure I'd endorse to make the template more compact would be to consolidate the separate links to "Territorial acquisitions" and "Territorial evolution" (link one or the other of these related pages, not both of them). --Orlady (talk) 21:00, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you think the Progressive Era, a major article on political and social changes, is a mere detail? The historical section failed to provide any connection to "Category:Eras of United States history" nor to the events actually shaping them. I am also rather surprised you feel this rather small template is "bloated" at 14,332 bytes. Template:Timeline history of the British Isles is currently stable at 20,939 bytes. Dimadick (talk) 21:43, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have move the links to Template:US history. way to many... we can talk about ones that should be there..but templates do not help if they have hundreds of links thats why we have the the history template and Index and Outline.Moxy (talk)

[EC]This is not a template for U.S. history, but rather a template for all topics related to the United States, and it is transcluded onto several hundred pages as a navbox. In contrast, the templated timeline of the history of the British Isles is used on two pages, on which pages it provides a large amount of the page content. These are two entirely different purposes for a template. A navbox should be fairly compact so that it can used for navigation; the same requirement does not apply to the timeline.

If this were a navbox template specifically for U.S. history, I agree that Progressive Era should be included, but it's a navigational template for all topics related to the United States, and it needs to be somewhat selective. Progressive Era is linked from other pages that are included. --Orlady (talk) 22:06, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see we have another problem ..this template was spammed all over today to places like Financial crisis of 2007–2008 and Cuban missile crisis. I guess will look over all the edits and start reverting ones that are not related.Moxy (talk) 22:33, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Templates should not replicate Outline of the United States or Index of United States topics (or Index of United States–related articles) or Book: United States

This template, being so large, is trying to do that. It should be trimmed to the main points, and subpoints split out to subtemplates for those main points. (etc, until reasonable sized templates emerge) -- 70.24.247.127 (talk) 07:16, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As a comment, while I agree that this template being overstuffed is a problem, I think that this set of links is just homeless and shouldn't be moved to {{US history}}. I reverted the addition of the links there; there's no rhyme or reason for how it's picked; it's something better for the articles mentioned above. I also think that neither template should be carelessly spammed at the bottom of any article that vaguely has to do with US History or US topics - this is a HUGE number of articles which could theoretically imply this can show up anywhere. Template bloat is already a huge problem; people will ignore 6 different collapsed templates, but if the page was maintained to have just 1 relevant template, readers can pay attention. SnowFire (talk) 05:36, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note that User:Dimadick has now spammed {{US history}} to a horde of topics, something I very much disagree with except for topics where a link to an overview of all US History makes sense (rather than just random historical incidents). These templates should not attempt to pick 50 random overview articles of US History and have them linked from everywhere... there's some more discussion on Template:US history. SnowFire (talk) 19:08, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IMO, cabinet departments like Dept. of Homeland Security and Dept. of Commerce don't belong in this part of the template. Keep Coast Guard, NOAA Corps, and Public Health Service Corps, but eliminate their parent agencies. --Orlady (talk) 21:06, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that was such a good idea that I implemented it. --Orlady (talk) 21:14, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How about this version of the template, modified from here to remove the multiple [show]/[hide] links..? :